


Let Me Taste

by ainm



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: First Times, M/M, challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 10:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/797099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainm/pseuds/ainm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim overhears something and gets a surprise -- and the surprises keep coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Me Taste

## Let Me Taste

#### by ainm

Author's website: <http://www.geocities.com/ainm66/TS/index.html>  
Not mine, making no money, intending no copyright infringement.  
Thanks to everybody involved in the first Ficathon -- loads of fun for all! :-)  
My entry for the TS Ficathon "Getting a Sense of Cliches." My cliche was "overheard conversation" and my sense was taste.  


* * *

I could tell that Sandburg wasn't that far ahead of me in the hallway as I approached his office. He wasn't expecting me, but I really wanted his opinion on a theory I'd developed on a series of fires that I'd been called in to help on, and I was near Rainier anyway, so I thought I'd stop by. Seeing him in his natural habitat is always interesting. 

For some reason I assumed he would be alone, but I could hear him talking to someone as he neared his office. And I could tell from his tone that it wasn't a student. Probably chatting up some buxom TA. Ha. 

"Come in, come in," I heard him say as he unlocked the door. I could see him in my mind's eye, ushering her in with a flourish. Blonde or brunette, I wondered. 

Some small sounds as they moved into the room and he closed the door. I was almost to the office myself. 

But then -- _ziiiip_... was that her jeans? I could hear clothing being put aside. Come on, Sandburg -- in your _office_? I stopped walking and just stood there in the hall, unsure what I ought to do. 

"Let me taste," he said. Oh god -- I really shouldn't be listening to this... 

"No." I was startled by the fairly deep voice. She must be an Amazon, this mystery woman he was going for. 

"Come on, you know you want to..." he wheedled. 

"I know no such thing -- I don't think you've earned it, do you?" 

Holy _shit_! That was no Amazon, that was a _man_! Blair was in there trying to taste a guy's -- oh my god, what _was_ he doing? 

I didn't even hear what happened next -- there was a ringing in my ears and adrenaline was rushing through my system. Blair was gay? Blair couldn't be gay. Bisexual? And I find this out _now_? 

Before I had really made a conscious decision about what to do, I found I was on the steps of Hargrove. I headed for the truck, climbed in and buckled up -- and sat with the keys in the ignition and my hands in my lap. 

Blair liked men? Why didn't I know this? Why did I care? 

I felt sick to my stomach... not in a homophobic way, I didn't think, but more in a shock-to-the-system way. My brain kept trying to picture what had been going on behind that closed door that I'd never even reached, but I'd only get tiny glimpses before my mind raced off screaming in circles. 

I'm not sure how long I sat there before my cell phone rang and pulled me from my scattered thoughts. Simon wanted to see me, so I tried to put the incident from my mind and headed for the office. I ignored the voice in the back of my mind that was laughing at me... 

* * *

Damn! I was supposed to be thinking about fires as in _arson_ , not as in sex. But that was easier said than done. 

"So the accelerant used -- damn it, Jim, are you listening to me?" Simon scowled at me, and I realized that I had no idea what he'd been trying to explain to me about the latest word from the CFD. Once I heard the part about they'd realized they already had the perp in jail after being picked up on an unrelated charge, my mind had wandered off again, and I'd been hearing Blair's voice in my head, somehow turned huskier than I even remembered it being an hour earlier. _Come on, man, let me taste you_ , he said, and he wasn't talking to his mystery guest. Shit. 

"What?" 

"That's what I thought. And where's Sandburg?" 

"He's --" another quick jolt of adrenaline as I flashed on an image of Blair, in his office on his knees, sucking some faceless guy. "-- busy," I coughed and continued. 

"Well it looks like this one's a wrap, so just go home and get your head together. I expect to see you fully with the program when you come in tomorrow, got that?" 

"Yes, sir." 

He probably had the right idea, I admitted when I was in the elevator halfway down to the garage. "Holy shit!" I announced to no one, thank god, as I realized that in my mental image of Sandburg, he was wearing that crazy vest from that very first meeting in his office. And on the heels of _that_ realization came the realization that I knew who the guy he was blowing was. Me. 

* * *

It probably shouldn't have been any kind of stunning revelation. I mean, once I faced the truth of the matter, it was clear to me that I'd been thinking about my partner in a less than platonic way for quite a while now. But apparently that thinking had been done at some sort of repressed sub-atomic level or something, never consciously recognized but yet totally a part of me, bone-deep for all that I was oblivious at the surface until now. 

As I drove home I thought about the way I react to him, the way I've always reacted to him, in-your-face and physical, always challenging and touching and _there_. But I'd never gone for guys before, it just... wasn't done. When I was growing up, no one ever said that there was such a thing as bisexual, and I was too into girls to be gay, so... 

But this had nothing to do with labels, nothing to do with stereotypes, this was just Blair. And me. 

I parked the truck and didn't bother with the elevator, almost running up the stairs to try to burn off some of the nervous energy that had welled up again on the drive home. I was missing something, I knew it, but I was too mentally askew to be able to identify it. 

Grabbing a beer, I found myself pacing the confines of the loft, trying to "process," as the Sandburgs would style it, the information that I'd uncovered today. 

Point One: Apparently Sandburg did not restrict his amorous inclinations to the opposite gender. 

Point Two: Apparently neither did I. 

Point Two-and-a-half: At least where he was concerned -- I was somewhat relieved, from the standpoint of having had enough revelations already, to find that when I looked back, I wasn't flooded with formerly-repressed longings for scores of other guys. But Blair? Oh yeah... him I wanted. 

I shivered with the thought of it, so unexpected yet so fucking obvious at the same time. I gave in and let myself imagine it, imagine us together. Imagine him tasting me, imagine me tasting him, all of him, taking his mouth and then moving on to learn in intimate detail the differences between women and men... 

I looked down at my growing erection and was somewhat pleased that I was dealing so well with this last-minute redefinition of my sexual orientation. Was it some kind of weird mid-life crisis? 

I thought about that a bit, wandering around the room, taking in all the most interesting things in there, all of which were Blair's, cultural representations from nearly every continent. I thought about all the things that he'd shown me, everything we'd done and learned together. No, it was no mid-life crisis. It _was_ my life. 

But... OK, fine, I wanted him. So? Did I really want to do something about it? Would he want to change our relationship? Would _I_ really want to? He was so damned _young_ sometimes, not so much a matter of the years but of the outlook... and we were good together how things were. Should we mess with it? What if it went wrong? 

Suddenly tired, I stopped my pacing and stood looking out over the city. Maybe there was a good reason I'd not let myself think about this before... 

* * *

"Hey, man, how're you doing?" Blair bounced in, sliding off his backpack and tossing it in his room before joining me at the balcony door. "I called for you and Rafe told me that Simon had sent you home." 

I just looked at him. He didn't _look_ any different. 

"What? Are you OK?" 

Maybe if he didn't look different, he might _smell_ different... I tried to be discreet as I sniffed him carefully, but apparently he noticed. 

"Um, anything I should know, Jim? Anything, you know," he waggled his hands a bit, "out of the ordinary?" 

Other than you getting it on with some strange guy in your office? Not a thing. I didn't say that of course, but I found that I was getting... angry. I couldn't smell anything "out of the ordinary" on him, a trace of chocolate but nothing... sexual... 

"Jeez, man, you're _growling_ at me -- settle down! Can you talk? Is this some primal Sentinel thing?" 

And suddenly it hit me, the thing that I wasn't getting until right that moment -- it wasn't any sort of primal _Sentinel_ thing, it was just plain old primal _male_. Jealousy, pure and simple. I didn't just want him, I _loved_ him. Blair was mine, and he wasn't going to be blowing anybody in his office except me. 

"Did you get your taste?" My tone was... less than polite. 

"What? I mean, words are good, but they aren't actually making sense yet. Try again." 

"You better have enjoyed it, because it was the last time." Dimly I was aware that I was being a bit... irrational? possessive? psychotic? but I didn't seem to care. 

"Jim, come on, what are you talking about?" 

" _Him_. In your office." 

"Office... you mean Dillon?" 

Stupid name. "I don't care what his name is, Chief, he's history." 

"Because... you've got a thing against sociologists? Or brownies?" 

"What?" 

"I don't know, man, you tell me! Is it Dillon or the brownie you're having an issue with? Is it scent? And hey, how did you know about it, anyway?" 

It began to dawn on me that perhaps I didn't have all the information here. A chill passed through my whole body in a wash. 

"Brownie?" 

"The brownie with the raspberries that Dillon was taunting me with all the way back from the student union? Isn't that what we're talking about?" 

"Um, yes, of course. Raspberries." Oh my god. 

"That... you know, that doesn't actually make any sense. Why would you be upset with Dillon for letting me taste his brownie? His sister Diane makes them and they're awesome. Are you jealous or something?" 

I couldn't help it, I sucked in a big breath of air and then started coughing. I could feel a flush coming over me. Smooth, totally smooth. Had he actually been talking about wanting a taste of a _brownie_? It had sounded... otherwise. Hadn't it? Or was it all my own imagination? 

"Oh man... oh man, you _are_ jealous, aren't you -- but not of the brownie, of Dillon?" 

I managed to stop choking and watched him as he obviously replayed what I had said in his mind. 

"You didn't say no more brownies, you said _he_ was history -- and jeez, melodramatic much? It's not about the stupid brownie at all, is it?" 

I didn't exactly shake my head, but he could read the answer on my face. 

"You thought Dillon and I...?" 

I didn't disagree. 

"And what, were you lurking outside the door or something?" 

"No! I was just coming to your office to talk to you about the arsons, and I heard you." 

"What on earth could you have heard to make you think I was... well, whatever you thought I was doing in there?" 

If the floor had opened up beneath my feet, I'd gladly have fallen all the way to the basement rather than answered that question, but there was no such divine intervention to get me out of it, and I knew that this was too important to screw up anyway. Still, finding the words was not that easy. 

"Well, it sounded like... I mean... there was a zipper, and it sounded like... clothes..." 

He looked thoughtful, presumably recreating the scene in his mind. "His jacket. It was a windbreaker with a zipper that was closed just a bit, and it was a little wet so he took it off and hung it on a chair. That can't have been all, can it?" 

"It's just... I'd heard you talking in the hall, and you sounded... flirty. I was assuming you were with some girl, so then when I heard the unzipping I immediately thought of jeans, and then you asked for a _taste_ , in this sexy voice..." 

"And then you realized it was a guy? A guy who is engaged, by the way." 

"Yeah. Sorry." 

"I'm not." 

"What?" 

"Unless this display of jealous territoriality is something _other_ than your way of saying that you'd like me to taste _you_... is it?" 

"Yes... I mean no... oh shit, what was the question?" Too many paradigm shifts for one day -- I really wasn't getting enough oxygen to my brain. He wasn't interested in Dillon, but he _was_ interested in... 

"Here, does this help?" he asked me, and he grabbed my collar with one hand and put the other hand on the back of my head, pulling me toward him so he could lick across my partially-open mouth. 

"Are we finally on the same page here?" he said with a happy little smile as he pulled back slightly. 

Finally the day was making sense. But I was sick to death of talking, so in answer I just leaned down and set about tasting him for myself, finally, thoroughly. 

"Better than brownies," he said when I let him up for air. 

"Mmm," I mumbled. 

"I love you, Jim. Just in case you missed that nuance." 

"Love you too, Sandburg. Now shut up and let me taste." 

* * *

End Let Me Taste by ainm: ainm@livejournal.com  
Author and story notes above.

  
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